Earlier this year Ardbeg kicked off their 200th anniversary celebrations with a series of special tastings across the UK. I was fortunate enough to attend the Edinburgh event with Dr Bill Lumsden himself.Normally when I attend whisky tastings in the presence of company representatives it's a very worn road we travel together. I'm sure they rattle off the same script and field identical questions at each event whilst trying to maintain that freshness and passion. I expected a similar chain of events at this tasting within the Royal Mile Whisky shop in central Edinburgh. It was a small venue with a cluster of whisky and Ardbeg enthusiasts, all eager to here what Dr Lumsden and his team had planned for the future.

Places were limited and for £10 a ticket the expectations were modest with a series of drams from the core range of Ardbeg. It was in the midst of tasting our second dram of the evening (starting with the classic Ardbeg 10 year old), that I suddenly realised I was in the midst of a marvellously inspiring and informative dialogue from Dr Lumsden; who was showing great poise and balance standing on a box to address this motley crew. So on impulse I started an audio recording, which I'll share with you now and I hope you enjoy it.

Clocking in at just over an hour in length, its well worth a listen and for whisky fans I'm sure will be a more memorable than most podcasts. On the link below you should be able to download the file itself or play this through a variety of options on Google Drive on the link below, or I've updated the piece with a Soundcloud function.Click here to listen to the recording

Hopefully the above works for everyone as I've never tried this before and the tasting recording has been pieced back together using Audacity. There is a clicking now and again which seemed a by-product of the demo version I was using on my mobile phone when the timing for each segment reached about 8 minutes; still doesn't hamper the enjoyment factor. Oh and these were the 2 fine drams towards the end...